Pinch me, I must be dreaming. Or maybe I'm psychic. Whichever, I woke up this morning just as BRAC, the Base Closing Commission (forget the RA in BRAC. We weren't worried about the "reductions" part of it) voted to keep what a lot of us thought was a doomed Ellsworth Air Force Base open, an eight-to-one vote, no less. The nice thing about being a pessimist is that you can't help but feel better when you're wrong, not that I was anywhere near alone in thinking that this time the party in the Black Hills was over.

You have to give our governor and our small congressional delegation, including senate newbie John Thune, a lot of credit or you have to wonder what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is thinking...on several things...or you have to pull from the back of that filing cabinet in your mind the seemingly far-fetched suspicion that the maiden was doomed so the conservative knight could save her and prove he is adequate if not superior to the liberal knight he defeated who just kept the base off the list, period. Oddly, the commission is going along with most of Rumsfeld's thinking on most other things. And it is hard to believe in the Pentagon picture that 20 million dollars saved or lost is anything to get excited about.

Thune still has some work to do, but I assume it's a formality. The list of those guillotined and those spared now goes to the White House. But it would be illogical, politically, for even President Bush to move South Dakota's bombers to Texas in light of the nearly unanimous vote. It would also cut Thune who is getting a lot a "ink" out of this play, nationally, more deeply than if the commission closed the base. I expect we'll see what is suddenly a largely ceremonial breakfast at the White House soon followed by a victory lap. One national Associated Press article alone gives Thune three positive mentions, making this presidential talk in the future less far-fetched, at least for the moment, although this whole conservative thing in the senate is starting to tremble a little at the leadership level.

In any event, we have to assume it's what it appears to be, that arguments about weather and penny savings by our delegation of four prevailed, the mice that roared, roared like a B-1 over Mount Rushmore.

Steve Hemmingsen
© 2005 KELOLAND TV. All Rights Reserved.